'Roundtable Discussion On The Problem Of Evil'

In the “Roundtable Discussion on the Problem of Evil”, Meghan Sullivan, Trent Dougherty, and Sam Newlands discusses the Problem of Evil for theism, as well as defences theists have come up with against the problem. All three people do not take the side of a theist or an atheist, but instead discuss the problem from a mostly objective view. The Problem of Evil is also discussed by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and William Craig in God? A Debate Between a Christian and an Atheist, where Sinnott-Armstrong argues from the atheist’s point of view and Craig argues from the theist’s. In this paper, I will discuss the points made in both sources to make my argument: I shall argue that there is a possibility that God could have made different types of evils …show more content…
As Professor Margolis explained in a lecture, in most monotheistic religions God is defined as an all-powerful, all-knowing being with perfect morals that loves humankind (Margolis, 2016). In this case, evil is used to describe anything negative in the world; for example, death, sickness, and natural disasters. These definitions create the Problem of Evil – if God is an all-powerful entity that is perfectly moral, then why hasn’t He prevented evil from existing in the world? As you can see, the Problem of Evil appears to present problems for theism. Nevertheless, I will argue why I believe the Problem of Evil does not create a problem for theism based on the suggestion made in the roundtable discussion that not all evils may have the same reason for existing (Newlands 2012, 22:06). It should also be made clear that I will not argue for the existence of God in this paper, but instead argue that the Problem of Evil does not pose an issue for …show more content…
Perhaps the free will argument cannot apply when people die in a natural disaster, but it does apply when a person decides to commit a crime. Some evils may even be a combination of reasons; for example, imagine a firefighter that died while saving people from a burning house. This death can be justified by the fact that he was given free will to choose to risk his life for other people, and it also shows higher virtues, such as selflessness and bravery. Different kinds of evil can have different reasons for existing; a natural disaster killing hundreds of people is a very different scenario from a murderer killing a person out of spite. It seems odd to even group these kinds of “evils” in to the same category. In fact, it seems almost intuitive to actually separate the types of evils in to categories – for example, natural evils, immoral evils, and accidental evils – and then sort them even further. The manner with which the evils are categorized are not important; the point I’m trying to make is that there are vastly different types of evil in the world, and that there surely would be different reasons for